The present invention relates to a magnetic disk apparatus and, more particularly, to a magnetic disk apparatus which has a multiplicity of head disk assemblies in a housing.
Magnetic disk apparatuses are known having a plurality of head disk assemblies in a housing. An example of such an apparatus is disclosed in "REPORT ON RESEARCHES AND WAYS OF APPLICATION", Vol. 31., No. 1 (1982) pp 305-316 (FIG. 14), issued from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation Institute for Research of Electrical Communication. In this apparatus, head disk assemblies are arranged two-dimensionally, i.e., in a plurality of rows both in the breadthwise direction and heightwise direction of the housing as viewed from the front side of the housing but not in the thicknesswise direction which is perpendicular both to the breadthwise and heightwise directions.
In this apparatus, the number of head disk assemblies which can be accommodated in a housing is limited by the breadth and height of the housing. Therefore, the rate of utilization of a given space is undesirably limited. In order to accommodate a greater number of head disk assemblies, it is important to increase the breadth and/or the height of the housing. Such a large housing, however, requires a large installation space.
The number of the head disk assemblies accommodated in the housing can also be increased by reducing the size of the head disk assembly. In such a case, the size of the two-dimensional arrangement of the head disk assemblies is correspondingly decreased also in the thicknesswise direction of the housing. A housing having such a reduced thickness may fail to provide a neat impression of design of a system when the housing is set side-by-side to other components of the system such as a controller.